When we arrived in Verona, Virginia, first stop on our way back home, we were completely charmed by the Shenandoah Valley Campground. What’s not to love about this:

And these:

Some of these:

And a bunch of these:

Temperatures in Virginia topped out at 89 F so when we set up, we had every vent and window wide open.

As soon as the sun went down, our nightmare began.

Noseeums (nasty little biting bugs) by the score began pouring in through our screens. There were thousands of them – they couldn’t resist our lights. We didn’t wanna start blasting bug spray around so we figured we’d just shut off the lights and go to bed early. We wanted an early start in the morning anyway.

As it was still pretty early and our neighbours were having a fire and being rambunctious, we shoved earplugs in and went to sleep. Because we both had our ears plugged, neither of us heard it start to rain.

It was, in fact, a downpour of biblical proportions. We slept on. It wasn’t until I rolled over into a big squishy patch of bed that I discovered that water was pouring in through the vent in the ceiling over my side of the bed. It was all being merrily absorbed by the sheets, blankets, mattress – all things just made for sucking up water.

“Cripes!” said I, or words to that effect. I bounded out of bed, darting madly to and fro, closing open things and feeling about for wet bits. Because I am so unusually alert when I first awaken (I wish I could have said that with a straight face), I reported back to Bob that all was well – no water had gotten in. At least none that wasn’t currently occupying my side of the bed. I got back in the sack, gave Bob a wee shove, curled awkwardly around the soggy zone, and went back to sleep.

A while later, I awoke, as I often do, wondering why the hell Bob has to be so flaming noisy in the morning. This seemed worse than usual, so instead of just pulling a pillow over my head as is my custom, I got up to see what was happening.

Remember when I said that no water had gotten in? I was wrong. To my credit, the one spot I really did check while I was (ahem) sleep-walking and closing things was dry. The rest of the trailer, however, not so much. Suffice it to say my deluge detection skills are not quite up to snuff.

As I shuffled out of the bedroom, there was ole Bob on his hands and knees under the table. He was attempting to sop up a lake with a bath towel. He was already on his third towel and he really didn’t seem his usual cheery morning self. He had upended most of the upholstered cushions and when I grabbed one to move it out of the way, it seemed a lot heavier than I remembered it being. It also peed on my foot which I thought was a bit rude.

We haven’t died. Nothing quite so melodramatic. In truth, we’ve been visiting with dear, dear friends and having WAY too much fun to think about blogging. A thousand appropriate apologies, yadda yadda. The other reason I haven’t been blogging is because my (STUPID!!) computer is malfunctioning badly. Long story short, it crashes and burns without so much as a “by your leave,” and it doesn’t have enough RAM (Rumply Angstful Misgivings) to open my bigass 32 ziggaquad camera card. (My computer-speak is impressive, no?) It simply refuses to do it. So, not only can I not sort out my photogs and choose ones that I think you might like, I can’t even look at any of them without my computer having a contusion…or a conniption, or whatever you call it.

In happy news, though, I think I’ve managed to outsmart it. I won’t say how because if I type it out, my computer will read it and know what’s going on. We can’t have that. So shush, okay?

By way of an update, we’ve now left Florida behind and are holed up on the beach in North Carolina (Yeah, life sucks). I’ll fill in the details shortly. In the meantime, here’s a fluffy bird in case you were in need of one:

We’re still camped out in Freeport, Maine. Touch wood, I think it’s finally stopped raining but we’re still under flood warnings. Here’s a shot from yesterday of the Androscoggin River to show you why:

We figured we could either hole up and wait out the weather or damn the umbrellies and get out there and see what we came all this way to see. The biggest challenge was keeping the cameras dry. When I wasn’t holding the umbrella in my teeth to shoot, Bob was holding it for me and muttering colourful expletives. I love that man.

These were shot out on Bailey Island, which is just a gorgeous spot that you can drive to along a seriously scenic causeway. It was really cold and wet, but so so beautiful.

Around noon or so, we went to a wonderful restaurant for lunch called Cook’s Lobster House to sample the local wares (but mostly to get warm.) The food was amazing! When we first arrived, I told Bob I was gonna photog our food like I’ve seen other travel bloggers do. I thought it would be awesome to have shots of us grinning at our fish and scallops and whatnot to remember the meal and the day. I got as far as the (“award-winning!!”) coleslaw. When the actual food arrived, we pounced on it like a pack of piranha and completely forgot about the camera.

(Best coleslaw I’ve ever eaten. Seriously.)

Speaking of lunch, Bob said I shouldn’t post this shot cuz it would gross you out, but I told him that it was my vision of the turbulent nature of life (eyeroll) and that you guys would get that:

That’s the biggest fargin’ gull I’ve ever seen in my life! I looked it up and it’s called a Great Black-backed Gull. They weigh in at just under FOUR pounds!! That’s twice the size of most hawks and about three times the size of a Herring Gull (the one’s most often seen at the coasts)! I swear I thought it looked as big as a bald eagle in flight. In fact, at first glance, I thought it was a bald eagle. I purposely chose a shot that doesn’t quite show you what he’s eating (close your eyes for a sec if you don’t wanna know….it’s a baby eider duck) Please don’t tell Bob I showed you that shot.

Oh, the minor set-back: Apparently the wiring for the hot water heater has zorched itself. We’re going to have to back-track to a place called Lebanon, Maine which has the closest Airstream dealership. Bummer, eh? We were supposed to hit Bar Harbour this morning. Bogus. I’m just glad that the wires burnt themselves up but left the rest of the trailer alone.

I’m sure this will astonish you to hear, but….I’m not a happy camper. We’ve arrived in Freeport, Maine and, rather than describe what it’s like here, I’ll just show you. This is our campground:

(Pretty sure those’re horseshoe pits in that puddle)

(How’s that for irony? That’s not actually a beached boat but a kids’ sandbox gizmo!)

Rather than subject you to more of my whining, I’ll simply say that the bright spot of our very soggy day was going to the LL Bean mother ship and spending an obscene pile of money on bedding (and life jackets – ha ha!). On the way back, we had to dodge “road flooded” signs and several washed out bits of pavement. The news is telling us that it might be time to start rounding up pairs of animals. I wish I was joking. Bob has affixed pontoons to the trailer.